Making Peace With Anil Kumble .....

Kumble has been a fine cricketer over a long period of time for India and still remains India's best bet in spin department.Even his harshest critics ,and even i have been one,will have to concede that you cannot find a more tough competitor.Though he is classified as a legspinner ,he hardly spins the ball and has been ridiculed no end for his lack of ability to make the ball talk on unresponsive surfaces a la Shane Warne or a Muralitharan.But Kumble has converted his so called weakness into his strength by being accurate and unrelenting in his attack and in the process has got more than 500 test wickets.No mean achievement that.He bowled with a broken jaw in West Indies because he realised that the team counted on him ,and this is just one example of his grit.
Though ,the captaincy has come late in the day for Kumble ,it does seem that he is relishing this opportunity to lead the Indian side.The test series in Australia will be his trial by fire and the way he led from the front in taking 5 wickets on the opening day of the first test augurs well for India and for Kumble.
My animosity for Kumble dates back to the time when i was in school and had a chance encounter with the Indian team during a flight from Delhi to Calcutta.I approached him for an autograph during the flight like so many others and by then he must have had enough of his fans,so he refused to oblige me.And from then onwards i have been critical of his exploits ,but his performance today made me realise that maybe now its time to move on .Good luck Kumble !!!

Modi Rules

Finally,the Gujarat poll results are out and it is Narendra Modi ,who has single-handedly fashioned a BJP win against all odds.There are only two kinds of people when it comes to Modi ,those who admire him and those who hate him.Modi was fighting not only with his political opponents and party rebels but also with english media which was vitriolic in its attack.For all his follies ,one cannot wish away the fact that he has given good governance to Gujarat and unlike in 2002 when communal polarization held sway,this time it was not the case and even then he has managed to hold fort and that too in style.
Of all the people that Mr.Modi would be thanking for his victory ,the biggest thanks should go to Sonia Gandhi for terming him "Maut Ka Saudagar" and in the process giving him a handle to beat the Congress to bits.The ill advised rhetoric backfired and went a long way in consolidating pro-Modi voters.Another blunder was to project the terrorist Shorabuddin as some kind of martyr and his killing as an example of targeting of Muslims.Even Muslims would have taken umbrage at this line of reasoning where a dreaded terrorist was turned into an icon of sorts.Despite losing badly to Modi led BJP ,there was no let up in the show of sycophancy by Congress leaders who blamed everything under the sun except for "Madame".

Surviving Delhi !!!

The first and foremost rule to survive in Delhi is to let go of any trace of politeness and courtesy because it would immediately identify you as a stranger to the city.If you want respect in Delhi then you have to make sure that you treat everybody with total disrespect and if you can complement it with two three choicest abuses all the better.While driving ,it is a must that you should gesticulate wildly and shower abuses at the driver of the other cars and pedestrians ,more so if it is you who is at mistake.All this may sound a bit over the top ,but the sad truth is that it is very close to reality.Civic sense is alien to the denizens of Delhi and we all who live in Delhi are in some ways responsible for this sorry state of affairs.Not long ago ,Delhi was branded as the rape capital of the country and it still remains one of the most unsafe places for women despite having a women as Chief Minister(Sheila Dixit) and Sonia Gandhi as a resident of National Capital Territory.

Single and Confused ....

There was a time not long back when i used to flaunt my single status and felt comfortable with it.Most of my friends were single too and future looked full of possibilities.But as time has passed by,most of the friends have got engaged and some have gone even further by marrying or announcing their plans to marry.Even this was fine with me as it is their life and i am in my own way happy for them.But few days back while attending a treat given by a friend of mine ,i was in for a rude shock.My single status made me feel not just out of place but also put me at the receiving end of some light hearted banter.
I know for a fact that there are many people out there who are single and by choice (very important).But as you start gaining in age this tribe starts dwindling.Most of my friends who are engaged always tell me how lucky i am not to be engaged ,but now i have serious doubts about this claim.Maybe the grass is greener on the other side for everybody or maybe not.But how can one know without changing ones status and that is something easier said than done.First of all you got to find the right person which by no means is easy and when you do find the right person she is already engaged(bad) or married(worse) sending you back to square one.I know that being in a relationship is no easy task ,it requires you to be everything that you are not in real life (maybe that is the fun part!).For now, I choose to be my real self !

Fightback

You can like him or hate his guts but one thing you simply cannot do is ignore Saurav Ganguly.He has seen the best of days as skipper of winning Indian team and faced the worst of times as a struggling batsman unable to conjure up a decent score on board.Its not that he has just played well in the last two innings but the fact remains that he has been playing consistently well and putting up decent scores.And what makes it special is that he knows that he was just one poor test match away from being discarded by the wise men of Indian cricket.Not many people believed that Ganguly would make a comeback after the Greg Chappell fiasco ,but he has proved all his critics wrong and that too in style.But the real test for him and the strong on paper Indian batting line up would come against the Australians in their backyard.Last time it was Ganguly's 144 in Brisbane test against the run of the play that not only saved India the blushes in that test match but also gave Indians an edge over the Aussies in the series.One hopes that Ganguly,Sachin,Dravid and Laxman would put up a show in Australia befitting their stature in world cricket and in the process teach the Australians a lesson or two !

December 6 !

Every year the news channels go into a frenzy and security agencies into high alert mode when this date approaches.On 6th december 1992,a sordid chapter in hindu-muslim relations was enacted when the disputed structure in Ayodhya was brought down by the kar-sevaks with tacit support from the ruling dispensation in Uttar Pradesh.But the seeds of this confrontation were laid by the previous Congress governments which had always tried to balance appeasement of minorities by feeding majority communalism.The politicians of all hues have been guilty of paying lip service to minority related issues.In fact their misguided steps ,for instance the religion based reservations being considered by various state governments will further alienate the minorities from the mainstream.If having a separate identity brings you benefits ,why in the world would anyone want to assimilate.
Then there is the question of freedom of expression,which is a cause dear to the so called liberals and intellectuals but only when hinduism is at the receiving end.The way Taslima Nasreen was hounded out of Kolkata and made to remove certain portions from her book "Dwikhandita" by the religious fundamentalists with tacit support from the marxists .What M.F.Hussain did in the name of art was to paint hindu deities in the nude and it can be in no way compared to what Taslima Nasreen has written as her writings have only exposed how minorities have been persecuted in Bangladesh over the years.M.F.Hussain has every right to paint nudes ,if he wants but why have as his subject hindu deities.There should be equality before law and the religion of the artist and the religion at the receiving end should make no difference to the application of the law.If this is not done ,it will only provide reinforcement to religious fundamentalists.